TWA Flight 599
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| Summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | March 31, 1931 |
| Type | Structural failure |
| Site | near Cottonwood Falls, Kansas |
| Fatalities | 8 |
| Injuries | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Fokker F-10 Trimotor |
| Operator | Transcontinental and Western Air |
| Tail number | NC-999 |
| Passengers | 6 |
| Crew | 2 |
| Survivors | 0 |
Transcontinental and Western Air Flight 599 was a Fokker F-10 Trimotor en route from Kansas City, Missouri to Los Angeles, California on March 31, 1931. It crashed ten miles south of Cottonwood Falls, Kansas; all eight on board died. One of those killed was Knute Rockne, the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame, who was on his way to Los Angeles for the film The Spirit of Notre Dame.
It is often claimed that Flight 599 went down in or shortly after a thunderstorm. However, meteorological records show that there was no significant convective activity at the time. The accident was actually caused by the composition of the aircraft. Fokker Trimotors were manufactured out of wood laminate; in this instance, moisture had leaked into the interior of one wing over a period of time and had weakened the glue bonding the structural members (called struts or spars) that prevented the wing from fluttering in flight. One spar finally failed; the wing developed uncontrolled flutter and separated from the aircraft.
Although the accident is best known for the death of Rockne, the accident also caused numerous changes in the operations of both TWA and the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), forerunner of today's FAA. TWA was forced (as were all American airlines of the day) to remove its fleet of Fokker Trimotors from service; the expense of this added to the bad publicity associated with Rockne's death almost sank the airline.
The intense public interest in the cause of the accident forced the CAA to abandon its policy of keeping the results of aircraft accident investigations secret. Many references claim that the accident was also the impetus for the formation of the Civil Aeronautics Board, an independent investigative organization and the predecessor of the NTSB, but the CAB was not formed until after an accident involving U.S. Senator Bronson M. Cutting underlined the CAA's conflicts of interest in respect of its associations with airlines and its provision and maintenance of navigational aids.
